Candice Bergen

The stylish TV star gets real about plastic surgery, losing weight, and her second marriage

One of the most beautiful people in show business isn't feeling so pretty. Curled up in her dressing room on the set of the ABC comedy Boston Legal, in which she plays the savvy, smirking attorney Shirley Schmidt, Candice Bergen is wearing gray flannel slacks and a pastel shirt. She's had this outfit on since 5:00 a.m., when she first arrived at work, and it's now noon. "I'll look better in a little while," she says over a lunch of a tuna sandwich and bottled water. "As soon as I wake up." Just another transformation for this child of Hollywood, whose father was the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, famous for his routine involving a caustic dummy named Charlie McCarthy. Bergen herself started out as a serious actress in films like The Group and Carnal Knowledge before breaking out in 1979 as a comedian in Starting Over. She finally found major fame as a sitcom star, playing the hard-edged newswoman on Murphy Brown.

As she waits to be called back to the set, Bergen kicks off a pair of beaten-up black shoes that she says her husband, businessman Marshall Rose, "just hates" but with which she refuses to part. She and Rose married in 2000, five years after Bergen's first husband, French film director Louis Malle, died from cancer. She and Malle had one daughter, Chloe, now 19, who is Bergen's pride and joy. During our chat, she speaks of Chloe fondly and often as she touches on love the second time around, that pesky battle of the bulge, and what she likes to do besides acting.

Liz Smith: Tell me, are you surprised to be enjoying another wave of fame after all your years in this business?Candice Bergen: I guess I am because I really didn't plan anything. You know, Murphy Brown came along when I was already over 40 and thought my career as a so-called leading lady was in decline. But then we had a ten-year run, and I am so happy to know it is back on the air on Nick at Nite! I haven't seen myself yet, but I know I'm out there on TV somewhere as Murphy again.

LS: Five years ago, you married the real estate mogul Marshall Rose. Had you ever considered that you'd remarry after Louis Malle died?CB: No, I thought I wouldn't. Our daughter, Chloe, was growing up, and I thought I'd devote myself to her. But I was so lucky. Now I just pinch myself every day for meeting and marrying Marshall and for being able to live in New York City with him, to travel, and to see Chloe having a swell time in her freshman year at college. I really am blessed. But this marriage is entirely different, in the sense that my two husbands couldn't be more different. One was French and an artist, and the other is American and a businessman and philanthropist. So that's quite a contrast. I've had the best of both worlds, really.

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